"There's no way of looking at a work of art by itself. It's not self-evident - it needs a history, it needs a lot of talking about; it's part of a whole man's [sic] life."--quoted in Stevens, M. & Swan, A. (2004) de Koonig: An American master. New York: Knopf.

Ah, but the 1930s New Criticism, and its proponents, espouses the opposite. The only thing that matters is the reader's (audience)response (Response Theory) to the work. There are, and should be, many meanings, because in the end we don't know what the artist's intention was. [I personally dislike this philosophy and the aesthetics based upon it. Meaning, a particular meaning, is vitally relevant.]